Legislated

NOSTALGIA: To force a body of people to have memories they do not actually possess: "How can I be a part of the 1960s generation when I don't even remember any of it?"

NOW DENIAL: To tell oneself that the only time worth living in is the past and that the only time that may ever be interesting again is the future.

" 'Make sure he gets lots to eat!' shouted Mrs. Monroe from her salt-rusted blue Bonneville sedan as she screeched out of the driveway, to which Arleen waved and then rushed inside to the bathroom where she brushed her blond feathered hair, applied alluring cosmetics, and then dashed down to the kitchen to whip up a special lunchtime treat for Buck, who, owing to his space poisoning, would only awaken once a day at noon, and then only for a half hour. She made a platter of Vienna franks appended to toothpicks and accessorized by little blocks of orange cheese. These she prettily arranged on a platter in a shape reminiscent of the local shopping mall logo, the Crestwood Mall letter C, angled heavily to the right. 'Facing the future' as the local newspaper had phrased it upon the mall's opening several hundred years previously when it was still 1974, even back then, since, as I have said, it has a/ways been 1974 in Texlahoma. As far back as records go. Shopping malls, for instance, a recent innovation on Earth, have been supplying Texlahomans with running shoes, brass knickknacks, and whimsical greeting cards for untold millennia.

"Anyway, Arleen raced down to the basement with the food platter and pulled a chair up to the bed and pretended to read a book. When Buck woke up at one second past noon, the first thing he glimpsed was her reading, and he thought she looked ideal. As for Arleen, well, her

heart had a romantic little arrhythmia right on the spot, even in spite

of Buck's looking like a Frankenstein monster.

' 'I'm hungry,' Buck said to Arleen, to which she replied, 'Won't

you please please have some of these Vienna frank-and-cheese kebabs.

I made them myself. They were most popular indeed at Uncle Clem's

wake last year.'

" 'Wake?' asked Buck. ' 'Oh, yes. His combine overturned during the harvest, and he was

trapped inside for two hours while he waited for the jaws of life to arrive.

He wrote his will out in blood on the cab ceiling.'

"From that moment on, a conversational rapport developed between

the two, and before long, love bloomed, but there was a problem with

their love, for Buck would always fall back asleep almost as soon as he

would awaken, owing to his space poisoning. This grieved Arleen.

"Finally one noon, just as Buck awoke, he said to Arleen, 'Arleen,

I love you very much. Do you love me?' And, of course, Arleen replied,

'yes,' to which Buck said, 'Would you be willing to take a big risk and

help me? We could be together always and I could help you leave Texlahoma.'

"Arleen was thrilled at both thoughts and said, 'Yes, yes,' and then Buck told her what she would have to do. Apparently, the radiation waves emitted by a woman in love are of just the right frequency to boost the rocket ship's engines and help it to lift off. And if Arleen would just come with him in the ship, they could leave, and Buck could get a cure for his space poisoning at the moon base. 'Will you help me, Arleen?'

" 'Of course, Buck.'

" There's just one catch.'

" 'Oh?' Arleen froze.

'You see, once we take off, there's only enough air in the ship for one person, and I'm afraid that after takeoff, you'd have to die. Sorry. But, of course, once we got to the moon, I'd have the right machines to revive you. There's really no problem.'

"Arleen stared at Buck, and a tear came down her cheek, dripped over her lip and onto her tongue, where it tasted salty, like urine. ' I'm sorry, Buck, but I can't do that,' she said, adding that things would probably be for the best if she no longer took care of him. Heartbroken but unsurprised, Buck fell back to sleep and Arleen went upstairs.

"Fortunately, Darleen, the youngest daughter, got fired from her perfume sales job that day and was able to take care of Buck next, while Arleen got hired at a fried chicken outlet and was no longer around to cast gloomy feelings on Buck.

"But with Buck's being on the rebound and Darleen's having too much free time on her hands, it was only a matter of minutes, practically, before love again blossomed. Days later, Buck was making the same plea for help to Darleen that he had made to Arleen, 'Won't you please help me, Darleen, I love you so much?'

"But when Buck's plea came to the part about Darleen's having to lie, like her sister before her, she froze. 'I'm sorry, Buck, but I can't do that,' she, too, said, adding that things would probably be for the best if she no longer took care of him. Again heartbroken but again unsurprised, Buck fell back to sleep and Darleen went upstairs.

"Need I say it, but history repeated itself again. Darleen got hired at the local roadside steak house, and Serena, the middle child, got fired from Woolworth's scent counter and so was put in charge of taking

care of Buck, who had ceased being a novelty in the basement and had become instead, kind of a grudge—of the same caliber of grudge as, say, a pet dog that the children argue over whose turn it is to feed. And when Serena appeared at noon with lunch one day, all Buck could bring himself to say was, 'God, did another one of you Monroe girls get fired? Can't any of you hold a job?'

"This just bounced right off of Serena. 'They're just small jobs,' she said. 'I'm learning how to paint and one of these days I'm going to become so good that Mr. Leo Castelli of the Leo Castelli art galleries of New York City is going to send a rescue party up to get me off of this God forsaken asteroid. Here,' she said, jabbing a plate of erudite celery and carrot in his chest, 'eat these celery sticks and shut up. You look like you need fiber.'

"Well. If Buck thought he had been in love before, he realized now that those were merely mirages and that Serena was indeed his real True Love. He spent his waking time for the next few weeks, savoring his half hours which he spent telling Serena of the views of the heavens as seen from outer space, and listening to Serena talk of how she would paint the planets if only she could see what they looked like.

' 'I can show you the heavens, and I can help you leave Texlahoma, too—if you're willing to come with me, Serena my love,' said Buck, who outlined his escape plans. And when he explained that Serena would have to die, she simply said, 'I understand.'

"The next day at noon when Buck awoke, Serena lifted him out of the bed and carried him out of the basement and up the stairs, where his feet knocked down framed family portraits taken years and years ago. 'Don't stop,' said Buck. 'Keep moving—we're running out of time.' "It was a cold gray afternoon outside as Serena carried Buck across the yellowed autumn lawn and into the spaceship. Once inside, they sat down, closed the doors, and Buck used his last energies to turn the ignition and kiss Serena. True to his word, the love waves from her heart boosted the engine, and the ship took off, high into the sky and out of the gravitational field of Texlahoma. And before Serena passed out and then died from a lack of oxygen, the last sights she got to see were Buck's face shedding its pale green Frankenstein skin in lizardy chunks onto the dashboard, thus revealing the dashing pink young astronaut beneath, and outside she saw the glistening pale blue marble of Earth against the black heavens that the stars had stained like spilled milk.

"Below on Texlahoma, Arleen and Darleen, meanwhile, were both returning home from their jobs, from which they both been fired, just time to see the rocket fire off and their sister vanish into the strato-sphere in a long, colonic, and fading white line. They sat on the swing Bet, unable to go back into the house, thinking and staring at the point where the jet's trail became nothing, listening to the creak of chains and the prairie wind.

" 'You realize,' said Arleen, 'that that whole business of Buck being | able to bring us back to life was total horseshit.'

" 'Oh, I knew that,' said Darleen. 'But it doesn't change the fact that I feel jealous.'

" 'No, it doesn't, does it?'

"And together the two sisters sat into the night, silhouetted by the luminescing earth, having a contest with each other to see who could swing their swing the highest."

Дата добавления: 2014-12-23